• Question: i really dont get how light works, loads of people try explain it but i dont understand. are sun rays like chunks that come through the window and bounce around or is it like the rays flying around?

    Asked by pepper11 to Hywel, Joseph, Patience, Poonam, Rachael on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joseph Cook

      Joseph Cook answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Light can be very difficult to explain because it is unique and complicated. For many years, scientists could not agree on whether light was a particle or a wave, and in fact it behaves as though it is both.

      The best way to imagine light is as tiny packets of weightless energy. These are called ‘photons’. Each packet is a tiny collection of rays travelling together in the same direction.

      When the light interacts with other things, like matter, it can behave in different ways. Depending on the circumstances, it may seem more like a particle or more like a wave.

      In order to really understand light you need to study both quantum mechanics and electromagnetism at quite a high level. Some aspects of these subjects still baffle me!

    • Photo: Poonam Kaushik

      Poonam Kaushik answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Light is electromagnetic radiation of a wavelength that is visible to the human eye (in a range from about 380 or 400 nanometres to about 760 or 780 nm). Light, which exists in tiny “packets” called photons, exhibits properties of both waves and particles. This property is referred to as the wave–particle duality. The study of light, known as optics, is an important research area in modern physics.
      The modern theory that explains the nature of light includes the notion of wave–particle duality, described by Albert Einstein in the early 1900s, based on his study of the photoelectric effect and Planck’s results. this theory states that everything has both a particle nature and a wave nature, and various experiments can be done to bring out one or the other.

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